Are these things really that striking? It's thoroughly pedestrian for a political writer to talk about power, and "Knowledge is power" is a big cliché.

Cashill makes much of the 2 authors' references to eyes, eyebrows, and faces.

There are six references to "eyebrows" in Fugitive Days -- bushy ones, flaring ones, arched ones, black ones and, stunningly, seven references in Dreams -- heavy ones, bushy ones, wispy ones. It is the rare memoirist who talks about eyebrows at all.

Etc. etc. Note that the one adjective they have in common is "bushy" — bushy eyebrows.

If we were playing "The Match Game" and Gene Rayburn asked the question name an adjective that is frequently used with "eyebrows," they'd all match with "bushy" — unless some ditz, say, Betty White, wrote "arched," in which case she'd crouch behind her card and attempt to waggle her eyebrows until, say, Bennett Cerf, clobbered her with his own card.

104 comments:

Ayres and Pelossi and Soros and Huffington and the rest of the late 1960's cabal of Jacobin new agers finally found the perfect vessel to pour all their work into and win power in an American election. I wonder if the recent Honduran experience will replay itself here when we reach the time that free elections no longer gurantee these operators their ruling powers?

I think it is a big deal if Ayer's ghost-wrote Obama's books. It's not that big a deal if Obama had a ghost-writer, though it undermines the marketing drek we've been shoveled about his singular talent.

But if that ghost-writer was Ayers, then that means he's much closer to the old terrorist than either have admitted to, and it indicates Obama is much more leftist, in the scary way, than we knew already.

If all there was to go on was the references to eyebrows, Cashill would be trying to make a seven-course meal out of extremely thin gruel. However, that's pretty much the least of the evidence that Obama had very little to do with writing his "autobiography."

From reading levels and sentence lengths to the natuical references to metaphor choices to thematic choices and right down to even the names of composite characters, the "similarities" point to much more than coincidence. Each one taken by itself could be meaningless, but when taken as a whole they present damning evidence that Barack Obama's much ballyhooed skills as a writer are just so much more smoke and mirrors.

When placed alongside the pedestrian and - quite frankly, at times - painful to read, contemporaneous writing samples produced by Obama, only a starry-eyed true believer could still believe that Obama had anything more than a cursory role in writing his signature work.

He's a fraud. He's always been a fraud. And his claims to have merely been a neighbor of Bill Ayers were never any more credible than the claims to have never heard any of the racist and bigoted sermons of Jeremiah Wright.

I grew up in a home teeming with 60s radicals, and believe me they all talk like this all the time. The sinking feeling of being trapped into listening to a lecture on the bourgeois power structure beneath the surface of Aesop's Fables is just too tedious for an 8 year old. I fully credit the experiences with turning both me and my brother into conservatives.

Without a lot better evidence than has been presented so far, this kind of speculation tends to help Obama rather than hurt him. Much like all of the speculation as to what the Clintons may have done to Vince Foster.

With so many GOOD reasons to oppose Obama (or the Clintons), it is foolish to waste time on these theories.

"But if that ghost-writer was Ayers, then that means he's much closer to the old terrorist than either have admitted to, and it indicates Obama is much more leftist, in the scary way, than we knew already."

Assume that there is no connection between Ayers and Obama's book(s). There is still ample evidence that the last part of your statement is true.

"Written by a terrorist. LOL"

In spite of your sarcasm, you are quite correct in using the word "terrorist." If it's okay for Ayers to be rehabilitated and then become a professor, then there's hope for Eric Rudolph. I'm sure none of you would have any problem with Dr. Eric Rudolph teaching education classes.

Thank you Crack. You are a bold commenter with a point of view from your experiences and are missed around here. The intellectual tone here is great and hard to find elsewhwere, but a little salt in the comments by someone with actual experience flavors the gruel of the pure thinkers.

Who cares if Ayres wrote it or not? They could show Obama in a three-way with him and Dohrn and it wouldn’t make one difference in my opinion of the fraud in any case. I was convinced he was a Marxist long before Ayres was an issue. The fact that he’s got a raging hard on to pass a economy destroying cap and trade bill and ‘health care reform’ should be obvious to only the most dimwitted liberal (but I repeat myself) that the man is determined to destroy the country. Let’s drive out more industry to China. Let’s support nuclear power in Dubai while we build windmills in Kansas. To the 80% of Americans satisfied with their health care, fuck you, we won and single payer is on the way. You’re going to reduce your carbon footprint while I keep my office toasty warm in the winter and balmy in the summer. You’re going to drive a cup holder on wheels while I take AF1 on a 15 minute joyride.

Is it an erudite way for the right to tie the left to cold blooded fanatics without using 'nazi' or 'fascist' (both generally associated with right, not left extremism) or 'communist' (which can be responded to with 'McCarthyism.')

Hard to say if Bark Obama is a Marxist, or not. I think he simply doesn't know what he's doing. I can imagine him going through school, and no matter what answer he gave to any question, he was given an A.

Isn't there a very scientific way to analyze word choice and link a piece of writing to an author? If I recall correctly, they used such analysis to figure out that the liar Joe Klein wrote Primary Colors and to link the writing samples the unibomber's brother provided to the FBI to the manifesto. Why don't they just do this kind of analysis on Dreams of my Father and put this to bed.

Hard to say if Bark Obama is a Marxist, or not. I think he simply doesn't know what he's doing.

Oh I think when it comes to the domestic side of the game, he knows exactly what he's doing. His old man was a Marxist as well as his mother. He admits those were the kind of people he was drawn to in college.

When I was a young childrens, my folks taught me you're judged by the kind of company you keep. That has pretty much stood the test of time though my whole life and I don't see Obama being any exception to the rule.

If it's okay for Ayers to be rehabilitated and then become a professor, then there's hope for Eric Rudolph..

G Gordon Liddy is welcome in conservative circles after spending 5 yrs in prison (after being sentenced to 20 yrs) for conspiracy, burglary, and wiretapping -- and also plotting to firebomb the Brookings Institution among other things - the reward was best selling books, roles in movies, a radio show and high paying lecture gigs.

Betty White is hip! Playing the wholesome ditz only makes her outrageous comedy even funnier.

Her preformance at the William Shatner Comedy Central Roast was one of the funniest I've ever seen, especially given her ties to the old-style TV roasts of the past. I might have posted exerpts before, here and here.

Eli...The Jacobin adjective means the historical cabal of Catholic Momarchs in France and Spain subverting the Protestant Reformation Kings in the British Isles in the 1600s. The word is french for James, who was their candidate for a restoration of a Catholic monarch under Papal authority. The Scottish King's successor had fled to France. Eventually he was landed with military forces in Ireland and came close to winning until the Scots-Irish withstood a long siege and defeated that cabal for good at the Battle of the Boyne. If the French Revolution 130 years later also claims the word, I am not familiar with that usage. The sophisticated secret factions and double agents surrounding the Protestant English Kings for 80 years is what resembles to me the late 1960 radicals such as Ayers. The Nazi political experience was another level of evil altogether not describrd by anything except occult insanity with a willing use of Satanic powers. Only a communist propagandist can say that he sees a Nazi as a right wing traditionalist. Facist simply means state control of the corpoate business structure and their markets, like GM is today.

Facist simply means state control of the corpoate business structure and their markets, like GM is today.

Well yes that's the traditional definition but liberals are quite good at rewriting the dictionary to serve their purposes. Liberals don't like to admit that the nazis were socialists so they're big on portraying them as conservative or right wing. Nazi was short for National Socialist German Workers Party. Hardly sounds conservative.

Eli...Sorry for my confusion. I just Googled the Jacobins and they are not the Jacobites thay I was speaking so much about Apparently the Jacobins are radicals dedicated to eliminating the old regime after a revolution, by any means necessary. While my poor Jacobites only wanted to replace the King of England with a Catholic King. 90 years earlier.

Characteristics of a facist state can include: Disdain for intellectuals and the arts. Disdain for human rights. Corporatism protected and labor suppressed or eliminated. Supremacy of the military. Constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, and flags. Police given almost limitless power to enforce laws. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a Unifying Cause.

Strikes me that a rather dated form of qualitative analysis is being done by Cashill - content analysis. This is used by many in political science (especially American politics and survey methods), linguistics, rhetoric, etc. Can be powerful if used well and rigorously within set guidelines/practices. But you have to know what those guidelines are and how they were implemented and observed.

"With so many GOOD reasons to oppose Obama (or the Clintons), it is foolish to waste time on these theories."

There's a difference between running a campaign ad on this sort of thing, and setting the historical record aright.

Obama's thin to non-existent paper trail meant that his books were a large part of the mythology upon which his candidacy stood. If those books weren't written by him, then when people look back upon this election there will be a far different historical judgment passed on the election of 2008 than the one his supporters would like to write.

The truth always matters. That:

a) Obama's biography is a lie matters. How many people formed their opinions of Obama based on his writing skill and the content of his books? How many people would hold different opinions of him if they knew that he was no more honest than Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass? How would that have changed the dynamics of both the Democratic primary and the 2008 general election?

b) If, as the evidence pretty much proves, Bill Ayers wrote the book, then doesn't that give him a powerful voice in the White House? Doesn't that mean that Obama is pretty much Ayers' puppet? Think about the overt or cover blackmail possibilities and probabilities. Threat of going public with proof of Obama's fraud is the Ace up Ayers' sleeve, and if you think a guy who thought nothing of planting bombs isn't capable of a little blackmail to pull some strings then you're just not paying attention.

The truth always matters, and the public has a right to know that it's been had.

- Unless those intellectuals and artists can be subverted to serve the state. Check.

"Disdain for human rights."

- You mean like protesters taking to the streets of Iran for a fair election? You mean like enlisting a criminal organization like ACORN to register Daffy Duck to vote for you? You mean like meddling in Honduras by demanding that a Leftist be restored to power in violation of that country's constitution? Check. Check. Check.

"Corporatism protected and labor suppressed or eliminated."

- Or co-opting labor corporatists and handing them control of their employers. Check.

"Constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, and flags."

- Substitute radical environmentalism, political correctness or any other liberal cause as the moral imperatives which require Leftist supremacy and you're absolutely right on the money. Check.

"Police given almost limitless power to enforce laws."

- Or government being given almost limitless power over people's lives. Check.

"Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a Unifying Cause. "

- You mean like Obama coming out and claiming that House Democrats who voted against cap-and-tax were responding to their constituents, but Republicans were just obstructionists? You mean like pretty much blaming every ill on the planet on Bush and the Republican Party. Check and check.

I don't care if Ayers wrote, helped-with, or copy-edited or critiqued Obama's book... mostly because autobiographies are generally written by people who don't *write* and I expect them to have a whole lot of help to produce something publishable. The only real difference between an autobiography and a biography is that in an autobiography the person the book is about gets to tell the ghost-author what to leave out of it.

I don't get the "oooo... aahhh..." over the fact that Obama (in one of his only claims to accomplishment) "wrote a book."

I realize the wingnut crowd loves this type of insanity, but anybody who actually thinks Ayers could handle this...without SOMEBODY, SOMEWHERE...being there, knowing about it as it occurred...leaking it to the press, etc...needs their head examined.

Next, shouldn't a literary style analyst like Jack Cashill be familiar with terms like "baleful" or "bill of particulars"? Cliches like smiling/grinning "like a Cheshire cat"? Cashill seems completely ignorant of what cliches are.

And both Ayers and Obama lived in Chicago for years, where we all say "Soldiers Field" even though we know it's Soldier Field. Sandburg's "Chicago" ends "Hog Butcher... to the Nation." "To" sticks in our minds rather than the "for" in the first line.

Here's the biggest "howler": Returning to the exotic, in his Indonesian backyard Obama discovered two "birds of paradise" running wild as well as chickens, ducks, and a "yellow dog with a baleful howl."

In Fugitive Days, there is even more "howling" than there is in Dreams. Ayers places his "birds of paradise" in Guatemala.

In Indonesia, birds of paradise are birds. In Guatemala, birds of paradise are flowers. The term refers to quite distinct beings in each setting.

Pogo ...Will Shakesphere wrote Shakespeare. But the rumor that he invented the fishing reel is only speculation by Phd's here and can safely be given no respect. Not that everyone is not entitled to their own opinion, stubbornly held.

I love how Jeremy acts like everyone who disagrees with him does so in the same way. Doesnt't matter what has actually is said or what the thread is about.

On topic, It would be mildly interesting to find out that Ayers wrote Obama's book, but not terribly relevant at this point. This is just a distraction at this point. Obama has a record now, let's talk about that.

If I recall correctly, they used such analysis to figure out that the liar Joe Klein wrote Primary Colors and to link the writing samples the unibomber's brother provided to the FBI to the manifesto.

Unabomber.

Smithsonian, Don Foster Has a Way With Words. Literary forensics expert confirmed Ted Kaczynski wrote the Unabomb Manifesto and, with the FBI, identified Eric Rudolph as a suspect in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing.

Teacher at Vassar, uncovered a Shakespeare elegy.

I reject the "too much time on his hands" -- posted by who? somebody idly reading a blog? -- and the other dismissive comments that deride this activity as unimportant. It's important because it picks up where our lauded "watchdog" press has left off, that is to say, from their slavering panting obsequiously servilely compliant heel position. <-- See what I did there? Most likely not. But a literary or linguistic forensic expert would note my re-use of that strange atypical phrase posted on another site.

It's not a matter of counting words in one text and comparing them with a word-counts drawn from other texts, nor does it hinge upon the number of Google hits a word or phrase search gets, although those things are useful. It has to do with understanding how people use language generally and how an individual writer identifies him/herself from the norm.

If I had the time, I'd apply a similar scrutiny to a couple William F. Buckley's books to see if I could find any "proof" that he wrote Obama's books. Think about it: Obama hasn't "written" any books since WFB passed away.

Who cares if Ayers wrote it or ghosted it or what? It's obvious they both are of the left and I'm sure share many of the same values. His non-support of the people of Iran versus his support of the Honduran Chavez wannabe illustrates one such value: the US "causes" otherwise wonderful leaders to act badly. Be nice and they will turn into a culturally authentic version of Thomas Jefferson.

Chip, I think this is terribly important, but will never ever be permitted rational discussion because the left runs everything now, including the banks, ABC, NPR, and GM, and pretty soon all f health care, so what's the point?

Well it would have been important, pre-election, if the liberal media weren't effectively a statist propaganda machine.

Enough to know what it is and what it isn't and the difference between writing non-fiction, fiction and a memoir. I don't write autobiographies so my own direct experience isn't any more or less valid than anyone else who has a clue. I generally admire anyone who can get a novel length manuscript written, but that comes with a number of caveats and one is that no one really expects an autobiography to be wholly written by the author. There is a certain social class that is enormously impressed with that sort of thing, obviously, but it's generally the "writing is hard, watch me suffer for my art and love me" social class that will sniff in disdain at the thought of rubbing elbows with a *commercial* novelist.

"How many have you ever even read?"

I'm sure you forgot to end that question with "this week."

In any case, it doesn't matter and you shouldn't distress yourself. They weren't the right sort of books anyway.

(If anyone is genuinely curious what I read this week... _Off Armageddon Reef_ and _By Schism Rent Asunder_ by David Weber. I recommend them highly. He makes the technical details of the evolution of Naval warfare interesting and does an excellent job of addressing matters of faith and theology. Also, this week, I recommend _Storm Front_ by Jim Butcher... just for fun.)

It's not a matter of counting words in one text and comparing them with a word-counts drawn from other texts, nor does it hinge upon the number of Google hits a word or phrase search gets, although those things are useful. It has to do with understanding how people use language generally and how an individual writer identifies him/herself from the norm.

And that analysis has been done, by someone trained to do so, and Cashill's argument has been found lacking.

It has to do with understanding how people use language generally and how an individual writer identifies him/herself from the norm.

Writing "beneath the surface" and noting "bushy eyebrows" doesn't really rise to the level of individual distinction, Chip. Neither is certainly nothing so distinct as the phrase you repeat, for example. Saying Cahill hasn't made his case here is in no way rejecting the importance of linguistic analysis.

I spent some time of Cashill's website for a while several months ago. Not convinced (it seems like a bizarre stretch), but I found it odd that President Obama and his wife, Michelle, moved to BALI (!) for 5 months so he could work undistracted (double !!) on his book.

Recently heard about Bruce Heiden (prof - classics, large midwest university, I think) and looked up his blog. He's the guy who noticed that Obama never says he wrote Dreams. Things like that are very significant.

I have had some expereince with someone significant who parsed his words very carefully. Talented narcissists are good at it. One has to listen to what they do not say to get a better picture of what the issues really are. (I think Pres. Obama tends to do that well ...)

"And who ever read a memoir that didn't have a boy riding a water buffalo and prodding it with a bamboo stick. Talk about cliches."

If I ever wrote a memoir I'd have to include a child riding a water buffalo... I couldn't say that the child had a *bamboo* stick. How would I know it was bamboo? In fact, I suspect that it would be some other sort of stick since I get the idea that bamboo sort of splinters rather than breaks off and wouldn't a child on a water buffalo simply break off a stick?

Bamboo is an interesting grass. I used some for garden stakes once and it started to grow.

Actually... I'd probably skip the cliche of the child riding the water buffalo and include a story about the neighbor girl who explained that it was important not to stand under coconut trees because the coconuts might fall on you.

That Obama would go to the land of his youth, a tropical paradise, to work on his book?"

I don't know that it's "odd" so that it matters but, dang, who actually has the combination of... adequate funds and lack of responsibilities... that make it possible to go off to a tropical paradise to write a book?

I'm well aware that it's possible to live very cheaply in some places but I really can't see Michelle living on the local economy or in a bungalow with geckos and bugs. And while it can be *cheap* it's not free, even if you *are* comfortable with geckos and bugs.

"without SOMEBODY, SOMEWHERE...being there, knowing about it as it occurred...leaking it to the press, etc...needs their head examined."

For somebody who goes on about how others don't read, you'd think you'd have read something or other about the Manhattan Project. ANd there were one whole Hell of a lot more people involved in that than Ayers' supposed ghostwriting. I tend to think he didn't, but I don't need to think he did to see Obama for exactly what he is.

First, let me stipulate for the record that I loathe Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn and that the world would be a better place if they exited it. Having said that, I have to quibble with the notion that Barack Obama did not write his two memoirs. Nor do I think Michelle Obama wrote them. I have read part of her Princeton thesis and I don’t think she is that good a writer. Hashing out all the details of why I think he actually wrote it would take too much time, but let me offer one salient example.

In “Dreams of My Father,” on pages 302-303 in the paperback version, Obama tells the story of meeting an African man somewhere between Madrid and Barcelona and feeling an intimate connection between them. This bears a striking resemblance to George Orwell’s opening to “Homage to Catalonia.” Perhaps Obama made it up out of whole cloth, or perhaps Obama merely emphasized the similarities to Orwell. In either case, a dedicated Marxist like Ayers would not likely put an homage to an ideological traitor like Orwell (in Ayers’ mind), a man who lampooned Communists, hated totalitarians, and in any event, hated trust fund socialists like Ayers and Dohrn—and made sure the trust fund socialists knew it.

Some of the scenes from Africa also seem less like ideological pronouncements than musings out loud about possible solutions, again not likely to be a tactic of an ideologue like Ayers.

As Hunter McDaniel said, there are a lot of good reasons to criticize Obama. I think he needs to up his game on Iran and I am not happy about his stance on Honduras, which is just encouraging Hugo Chavez. But face it folks: this issue of authorship is not worth it. Both his parents were PhDs; the man has some serious smarts. It doesn’t mean he can’t pursue seemingly good things for the wrong reasons, or even that he can always read people well. But Obama is more than capable of writing those two memoirs.

Remember, his first book was published in 1995—nine years before his keynote address. Sure he was a black graduate of Harvard Law School, but they are more common than you think. So, a publishing house is not going to spend money for a ghost writer. I think you are giving too much credit to Ayers, like Ayers is some kind of Machiavelli, rather than a cocksure, self-righteous leftist.

The one does not remotely follow the other. I wouldn't classify his "smarts" as serious, merely above average (or average for POTUS). Whether he wrote the books or not to me is simply an interesting tidbit. The fact that he has written TWO memoirs at the age that he did says a lot about him, and none of it particularly flattering. Guess he figures not enough people paid attention to him after the first one. I'll be FAR more interested in any memoirs he writes after he leaves office.

After drifting here and there, back and forth to other continents for many years, she returned to Hawaii and got her Phd at age 50 in anthropology. To me, that is not overwhelming evidence she had exceptional brain power.

Yes, it’s possible to analyze a variety of linguistic features to ascribe authorship. Useful feature sets include words, function words, parts-of-speech, punctuation, and syntax. There are also a number of statistical or machine learning methods to carry out the authorship ascription. Perhaps the best currently available is support vector machine.

I tried this all a while ago, to test the Ayers authorship canard. The author of Dreams is also the author of Audacity (=Obama). Dreams did not match Ayers’ writing, or anyone else in a large set of random authors.

I might not like the guy, but he essentially wrote his own books (though he’s not above pilfering a nice turn of phrase).

So both Ayers and Obama misquote the opening line of Carl Sandburg's "Chicago," substituting "hog butcher to the world" for "hog butcher for the world." This mutual error would be significant (an "A-level match") if Ayers and Obama were the only two people who ever made it, but according to Google Book Search—a secret search engine to which only I have access—the same mistake has been made by Nelson Algren, Alan Lomax, Andrei Codrescu, H.L. Mencken, Paul Krugman, Perry Miller, Donald Hall, Ed McBain, Saul Bellow, S.J. Perelman, Nathanaël West, Ezra Pound, Wright Morris, Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, and the 1967 Illinois Commission on Automation and Technological Progress. (To name but a few.) According to Cashill, I have now proven that Dreams From My Father was written by many a dead man of American letters, a living mystery writer, a New York Times columnist and the 1967 Illinois Commission on Automation and Technological Progress.

What worries me is that Obama now uses the words and the political instincts matching up eactly with the words and political instincts of Fidel Castro and Cesar Chavez about the Honduran guys opposing Marxist rule in Central America. Honduras is right on Mexico's doorstep leading to our undefended border at a coming Red Dawn. Of course Michael Jackson's death must remain 100% of what we are learning about in breathless detail in all media today. Am I right about this?

The fact that he has written TWO memoirs at the age that he did says a lot about him, and none of it particularly flattering.

The second "memoir" was written after Obama became a politician, and as NYT reviewer Michiko Kakutani put it, "Mr. Obama’s new book, “The Audacity of Hope” — the phrase comes from his 2004 Democratic Convention keynote address, which made him the party’s rising young hope — is much more of a political document. Portions of the volume read like outtakes from a stump speech, and the bulk of it is devoted to laying out Mr. Obama’s policy positions on a host of issues, from education to health care to the war in Iraq."

I guess it'd require one to not know that McCarthy was actually correct in his claims (Venona is death to the "McCarthy just smeared people randomly" crowd) and to not actually read primary documents involving him rather than newspaper stories.

Hint: He had no desire to name names in public session out of concern that some of the people might not be Communist at all, but he was forced to do so by the Dem majority.

I think his post-Presidency memoir will go a long way to demonstrate if he wrote the original ones.